


time zones

by apotheotic



Category: Marvel (Comics), New X-Men: Academy X, X-23 (Comic)
Genre: Asexual Character, F/M, Laura is Not Good With Words, Or Anything Else, Phone Sex, Relationship Problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 19:35:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3393716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apotheotic/pseuds/apotheotic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura? he says. </p>
<p>  <i>Yes,</i> you tell him, <i>I’m here,</i> even though you are not. You are on opposite sides of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	time zones

**Author's Note:**

> [lkinneys](http://lkinneys.tumblr.com) and I were talking about Julian trying to sext Laura. Somehow this came out of that.

It’s the first time you’re in different time zones and he calls to hear the sound of your voice. You know this because he has nothing to say, he only asks you to wait, wait a minute Laura, don’t hang up. I just - I _need_ this, okay?

It is three in the morning. You should tell him to call later, at a reasonable hour for both of you. But you don’t hang up; you talk to him about nothing, about things that don’t matter, information that is six hours farther out of date where he is, the pointlessness of it baffling and a little uneasy in your gut. You don’t know why you are doing this for him, just that here you are doing it all the same. Both of you fill the silence with this pointless chatter, until he finally sighs and says he should probably hang up. Everybody’s moving out in a few hours and he doesn’t want to be dead weight.

Yes, you say. I should also sleep.

But you don’t press the button. You sit perched on the edge of your bed in the darkness, listening across the ocean to the sound of him not hanging up. It unnerves you not to be able to hear his heartbeat. Without it, his breath sounds thin, unconvincing. You do not know what it means that this makes your heart beat faster. He is with a team of your friends. He is safe.

"Julian," you say eventually.

“Right.” It sounds like something else will follow it. Then: “Uh, goodnight, I guess. Talk to you later.”

You listen selfishly to the ebb and flow of his breath for three more seconds.

“Good night, Julian.”

You lay the phone on the pillow next to you and do not fall asleep for an hour and a half, replaying the sound of his voice and frowning at the feeling it lights in the pit of your stomach. _Goodnight, I guess. Goodnight. Goodnight._

-

The second time, you are the one hours ahead, and there’s an odd hitch in his voice. At first you think he is crying. Then you recognize the pattern of his breaths, short and shallow. This is something more familiar: sex.

The picture falls into place - his hand around his dick, face screwed up tight and a faint sheen of sweat on his nose and upper lip. But he doesn’t ask if you want to do what he’s doing, together. This is because he knows you don’t touch yourself. You told him that when he asked you to do it for him, once. It warms you to know that he remembers, that he puts value in the lines you draw. He doesn’t say anything about sex at all, in fact.

He asks how the weather is in Prague, and you don’t think he really hears when you tell him that it’s rainy, but tolerable. He tells you how Pixie got sentenced to a week of eraser-cleaning duty for accidentally spraying Miss Frost with a cloud of psychoactive dust. Nobody even knew there were any oldschool chalkboards and erasers hanging around the school, he says, and laughs. It isn’t his usual laugh. This is a lower, rougher sound.

It feels like a game, him saying normal things while you can hear the harsh edge in his breath, and every so often, the slap of skin on skin. You wonder if this is part of the game: neither of you mentioning what is going on behind the smokescreen of your conversation. Talking around it while both knowing how obvious it is, how aware of it you both are.

You answer his mundane, unfocused questions with bland responses, picturing him in your mind by the sound of his voice. To your surprise, you miss the feeling of his body pressed up behind yours. You miss his breath in your ear, low and even. Although none of this makes you want to slip your fingers into yourself and pretend they are his, you think that he misses the same things. That he misses the dip you make in the mattress more than the heat of your mouth on him. You do not think this is just about getting off, or he would not have called you. He has other means at his disposal. His hand would be enough.

What are you adding to the experience, with just your voice? You want to ask, but it feels like that might be outside the rules of the game.

He says your name just before the quiet grunt that tells you he’s come. You lie very still, willing your hearing to pick up every detail that is lost to the limitations of technology: his heartbeat, the creak of the mattress as he settles, the nuances of his slowing breath.

You are about to fall asleep when he speaks again.

Laura? he says.

_Yes,_ you tell him, _I’m here,_ even though you are not. You are on opposite sides of the world. It is the first time the figure of speech has struck you as odd, and the feeling crawls down your spine unpleasantly. You want to go back to the lazy warmth that had pooled in your belly listening to him pleasure himself to the sound of your voice.

He clears his throat, sucks in a breath, then says: Be careful, alright?

A hundred reasonable answers come to mind. _I am always careful. I am very difficult to kill. I have protected you more often than I have needed your protection; why are you concerned?_ Instead you hear yourself say,

_Yes. I will._

-

There are many calls after that, some from other time zones, and some from no further than the other end of the state. Half the time he does not know where you really are. But like a dog for a bell, you find yourself waiting for the familiar buzz of your phone as soon as you’ve put your head down.

You start to associate the nights that you are apart from Julian with his voice instead of the nightmares that creep in when you sleep alone for too long. You want to tell him how much this means to you, but a part of you worries that then he will stop. It will stop being pleasurable for him. You will become an obligation.

So you continue to play the game, silently basking in his voice, imagining him near to you while he imagines fucking you. He calls in the middle of the afternoon once from the east coast of Russia and asks what you are wearing. You look down at your sweat-stained shirt and athletic pants, the worn-out sneakers on your feet with ragged holes where you have extended your claws through them during countless training sessions. Somehow, you do not think this is the answer he has in mind. Still, you describe it to him faithfully, in the same way you have told him the weather and how many miles you travelled on a given day and what was being served for lunch.

He lets out a surprised burst of laughter.

“Laura, I’m trying to have phone sex with you. Not that you’re not sexy in your gym clothes, but - usually people make up some lacy underwear they’re not actually wearing, or whatever.”

You  frown. You’ve messed this up somehow, although Julian doesn’t sound disappointed. “I understood that we were having...phone sex. But I thought the point was not to talk about sex.”

“What?” You can hear the wrinkle between his eyebrows, in the tone of his voice. If you hadn’t spent all this time apart, you might not have realized how well you know him, all of his mannerisms and the little expressions that change his face. “Of course you can talk about it. I just figured you wouldn’t - I mean, I thought it’d be less weird for you if we didn’t.”

“It is not ‘weird’. I...like listening to your voice.”

“You don’t get off by yourself though. I mean, you told me that.” He sounds guilty.

“No, but I do not mind if you do.” You pause and bite your lip. “...Julian, ask me about my clothes again. I can pretend to be wearing lingerie if you want.”

This time when he laughs, it’s loud and round and full of something that sounds like the way you felt, that night you wanted to ask what it was he needed, whether this has been about all of you or just the fact that he misses the sex. You suddenly realize that maybe you do not want to know the answer after all. You long for him, everything about him, so deeply that the thought it might not be the same for him knocks the breath from your lungs. It cuts you like a strange knife, a pain in places you’ve never felt pain.

He laughs, and then he goes quiet. The quiet stretches for a long moment you are afraid to break.

“God, I miss you.”

He sounds like he’s smiling, and two months ago you might not have understood how somebody could smile while telling you something that should indicate sadness. Now you understand perfectly well. How many nights have you fallen asleep with a smile on your face, happy but aching at the same time?

“I know,” you say. Immediately you know these were the wrong words, but you cannot put your finger on why. It is the truth; you know how he feels, intimately. You’ve felt the same way.

“Look,” sighs Julian, “let’s just forget about the whole phone sex thing, okay? We can just talk. Just...tell me how your day’s been going. Let’s talk about that.”

And just like that, you are back on the same strange, familiar ground.

-

Time passes. You are apart, and there are no phone calls. You wonder whose voice Julian is listening to at night, if the dark is as empty for him as it is for you.

-

The phone rings at one a.m. and you think, _this will be the last time_. You close your eyes. Then you pad across the faintly dusty floor of the apartment Gambit has given you to stay in and pick up your phone. Let yourself be mesmerized for a few moments by the lurid green glow of his name, backlit against the dark screen.

You let it go to the last ring before you answer.

“Laura? Laura, listen - don’t hang up - ”

“We have nothing to talk about,” you tell him. You think about all of those conversations in which you had nothing to talk about, and how full they had been. The static of the line feels empty by comparison, now. You cannot fathom his expression without seeing it.

“You _know_ that’s not true! I get that I screwed up, okay? I was an asshole, I should never have said any of the shit I did, I was way out of line. But we’re not nothing, Laura. This, us - it didn’t just evaporate overnight. Even you can’t just act like it never happened. I know I’ve been a jerk, but I also know you still feel _something_ for me.” This time, the catch in his breath is crying. Another memory sparks, that same sound in a warmer context, but it is dim and far away. You close your eyes again. “Laura, fuck, please say something.”

You think about another man’s hands on you, and how wrong it had felt. How it hadn’t felt as wrong as the bruising curl of Julian’s anger around your wrist.

You think about the question you never asked, and how your heart still pinches when you contemplate the answer. About all that you are letting go. About the nightmares, and the promises you have made to him, and the memory of his breath warm on the back of your neck.

_You really are just a machine. You’ll never want anyone._

You are a different person now, and so is he. Yes, you feel for him. You miss him in a way that feels as though it will tear you apart. But the person you miss is not in the boy calling you tonight. He is somewhere lost to you forever, farther than the distance a phone call can bridge. You cannot find him by hanging up and going to where Julian is. He exists only in your memories now, like your mother, like the feeling of his hands cupping your face, flesh on flesh.

You say, “Goodbye, Julian.”

You do not wait for him to convince you. You do not wait for your mind to be changed.

You hang up and listen to the sound of nothing on the end of the line, only the muffled sounds of the city around you, distant but alive and here, where you are.


End file.
